Joe Schmidt has highlighted a “real risk” he doesn’t want to get involved in when reviewing the lopsided penalty count that left his Wallabies beaten by Argentina in the Rugby Championship.
Australia lost 26-28 in Round Four on Saturday, and a hot topic post-game was the penalty count that read 14-7 in favour of the Pumas.
It played a crucial part in the outcome of the match as it allowed Santiago Carreras to kick seven penalties to account for 21 of his team’s 28 points – his seventh kick on 64 minutes put his team 28-7 clear.
In sharp contrast, none of the points scored by the Wallabies came from penalties as they instead dominated the try count, winning that facet of play 4 -1 but ultimately losing the match despite scoring three in the closing 12 minutes of the game.
Nine Wallabies conceded penalties
Five Australian players – Max Jorgensen, Corey Toole, Billy Pollard, Jeremy Williams and Fraser McReight – gave away two penalties each, with one infringement each from Hunter Paisami, Taniela Tupou, skipper Harry Wilson and Angus Bell accounting for the other four concessions.
The level of indiscipline was Australia’s worst so far in this year’s Championship as they conceded just four and six penalties in their two matches last month away to South Africa. While that number jumped to 10 last weekend in Townsville, it wasn’t terminal for their chances of winning, as Argentina conceded 12 in the same match.
However, the difference was stark – and painful – in Sydney, and an explanation was demanded from Schmidt about the falloff that happened. “It’s a variety of things; it’s hard to put your finger on one thing,” he explained.
“A couple of times we have been penalised for sealing, or we have been penalised for holding on on the ground, or we have been penalised for offside. Twice we were penalised for getting up in the ruck and being in the way.
“I thought there was some good gamesmanship from (Gonzalo) Garcia to manage to run into people, that sort of thing. I thought they fished a couple out, and we provided some too easily.
“We have got to go back and have a look at how we can get out of that pass channel, running channel post-tackle, and at the same time there is a couple of offsides right at the start of the game – that dilutes the confidence to get forward off the line a little bit and then you get a little but passive and get caught on the wrong side of a tackle. Those things, I suppose, can start to stack up after a while.”
Schmidt was invited to comment on the performance of English referee Christophe Ridley, but he didn’t want to go down that avenue in public. “Look, I’m frustrated with what we didn’t get right. I think as soon as you start getting distracted by things you don’t control, there is a real risk.
“We will go through the channels, and there is decisions right towards the end, when we almost get ourselves back in the game with a little bit more time to spare, where we are frustrated, but it’s our fault we are in that position in the game to a large degree.
“If we can stay focused on what we need to do and leave the match officials to focus on what they need to, I think it’s probably the best course of action.”
Wallabies skipper Wilson was also reticent to talk about his seemingly awkward on-field rapport with Ridley. Asked whether it seemed difficult for him to get his points across to the referee, he said: “Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit.
“Obviously, we gave away too many penalties, and some I wanted to have another look at but didn’t really get too much opportunity there. We have got to be better.
“In the first two games against South Africa, we gave away, I think, 10 penalties in two games, and we have obviously done a lot more in the last two games. As a squad, we need to improve that ourselves. I’m not going to comment on our relationship.”
Saturday’s defeat was the first time in four Championship matches that the Wallabies had a European referee. Three New Zealanders took charge of their two matches in South Africa and last week in Townsville – Ben O’Keeffe, James Doleman and Paul Williams.
They will finish their campaign against the All Blacks with two more European referees in charge, Italy’s Andrea Piardi in Round Five in Auckland and then England’s Matthew Carley in Round Six in Perth.
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